My Dear Hard Drive

Archive for the ‘Crafts’ Category

My nephew and his friend have been nominated for for best new talent in the Age EG Awards. How cool is that? They have a 2 man -band playing some crazy kids stuff… Let’s shall embed a video shall we not?

If you like them, cast your vote right here!

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I just found a blog that was just absolutely sweet. Unique, totally. A cartoonists website. Do you get the feeling, when you see something really artistic, that you have to try something like that too? I do, every time. I’ve seen soaps I want to try to make, cartoons, doodles, bead necklaces, book bindings and what not. I want to try that! At the same time, it is so easy to look at what you do yourself, as something quite ordinary. What ever you do yourself, to you it is ordinary. You know how to do it, it comes out naturally, without much of an effort. Someone else would be lost trying to do what you do. But you go: “oh that’s not art, that’s just something I doodle!” But doodles, they are so often so fantastic! A lot of people have their own special thing they doodle. I doodle paper cones. Like the ones in the photo.

What do you doodle? We all know you won’t make money out of it, (well, probably) but it doesn’t mean it’s not art. We could call it disposable art, borrowing the term from my husband who writes “disposable poetry”. Do you have any doodle art on your desk? Pop them into your scanner and show the world in the comments using html-tags!

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Although I am not planning to have children in the near future, if ever, I often find myself talking to one of my own, in my imagination. Today, I have one of those life lessons to share with all of you.

I was born with talent. Lots of talent, in lots of different things. I’m talented in writing, singing, designing, modelling, arts and even sports as I am very limber and very coordinated. In sports, although nobody would believe this, I have been actually asked to try out to represent my nation Read the rest of this entry »

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In case you haven’t been following, I got this old mannequin doll and have been fixing her up bit by bit. Anyone have ideas for her skin?

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She got a bit more attention today. Not quite done yet, but surely I have to report to you where I’m at, right?

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Does anyone know how to fix up mannequin dolls? I don’t really know the do’s and don’t of this little project, but I intend to do my best. When we visited Tasmania last year, I already had… um… Fell in love with a mannequin doll my nephew-in-law had used in a music video or something and had then no need for it. For the summer, she was the “first mate” of my brother-in-law’s boat, guarding it while he was away. (Some house visitor had actually spend a while talking to her before realising that she was a doll. :p)

I regret not taking a before picture. The doll was dirtier than I first thought she was, but I only realised it after scrubbing her down with a tooth brush. :p Fortunately her tacky make up came off more or less, and the glue that had been used to dress her up for a party favour probably, came off of her private parts. The poor girl has been around. Read the rest of this entry »

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The issue of nude children in art is currently flaming in Australia. Art galleries are being cleaned up of what can be considered child porn and unbelievably mothers and fathers cannot photograph their own children during sports or school plays. I don’t claim to have an answer to the question, but more so, have more questions to add.

I have a problem with this whole idea of protecting children to death thing… I UNDERSTAND the concern, but I have a problem with it, and I’m not quite sure how to word it. I mean… At some point with all the talk of pedofiles, we OURSELVES have started looking at children in a sexual way. When I was a kid, there was nothing odd about having our naked photos in the sauna presented in the family photo album. I bet you, today that would be an outrage. It didn’t cross anyone’s mind that that would not be okay – we were children, innocent, beyond all that.

At the same time shops are selling kids size T-shirts saying “daddy just wanted a blow job”… Who buys them?! Who in their right mind would put that on their child?

Anyway, back to art. Raping children for art is obviously not a good idea. But presenting a child doing childish things in nude… Is there really anything wrong with that? Posing a child on her back with spread legs, obviously, not art. Photographing a child in a plastic pool outside the house with sun rays glittering and the sort, I would claim it’s art, and beautiful.

So what about “fine art nudes” that are taken with the body study frame of mind? What makes children special in this regard? We photograph old people, we take photos of fat people, young people, overly thin people, and so forth and so forth, as their bodies are interesting in a non-sexual way as well as sexual. We just most often don’t look at these photos in a sexual way even though the model was hot as hell.

The difference is, that the child can’t say yes or no. Most adults would not do fine art nudes, some of us would – like me. What if photographing a child would not be wrong, just publishing it would be. Would that make sense? Parents should be able to have photos of their children in their most natural way, and if the parent is an artist, why shouldn’t they do a fine art photo shoot? However, the child cannot tell you if the photos should be published. The photos should stay in the private collections until the child is legally adult and can make decisions like that.

There is an exception of a rule in copyright laws. A pornographic photo is always under the copyright of the model instead of the photographer. (You can check this, I’m not completely sure, but I think it is the case. Maybe it’s just in Finnish law.) This is to protect a persons right to stop photos of this nature from spreading around. (Some models probably sign that right away at the shoot.) Anyway, that makes sense. As to fine art nude photos, the copyright stays with the photographer. Drawing that line is not always easy though. But with children, shouldn’t it be, that the child always owns the copyright of a photo that she or he is completely naked or have some of the “private parts” showing? ALWAYS, without exception?

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